Another requirement for me for a laundry is a dedicated space to hang clothes to dry, or access to the garden to dry on the line when the weather is up to it. In some of the places I’ve lived I’ve had to dry stuff in bedrooms and in corridors and when the weather gets humid (like in Tokyo) this takes a few days and it’s not nice to look at. I remember when I lived in Canada I did a lot more tumble drying though.

There’s no discussion of placement of laundry – the upstairs, downstairs, bathroom, garage question. I spend so long doing laundry I’d love a really well laid out room within easy reach of the kitchen. Room for 3 hampers for sorting, table for folding, room to hang stuff up, good ventilation.

Remembering places I’ve lived brings me on to talk about why all the people in this group are here. Jim remembers looking at places with his Mum, Terri has moved many times and that’s the same for me as well. I’ve experienced lots of homes in lots of countries so I’ve developed a sense of what works for us and what doesn’t. I’d be interested to hear how others, particularly the non-design-professionals, find themselves interested in all of this.

Other peoples comments have also made me think. Murray talked about the number of examples and it got thinking that you could look for opportunities to support your arguments by finding plans which support several points. Maybe one or two graphic plans in the centre of the pages with points around the outside.

Jim talked a bit about avoiding supersizing but avoiding being stingy on space. I think what’s important is that space is relative. The problem occurs when there’s wasted space and it would have been better employed elsewhere in the plan, for example if a good laundry space is missing but there’s a huge master bathroom. Big space in good proportions can be lovely.

Hello everyone!

Thoughts on today’s section:

1) The comma in the first line (introduction) can be removed. “Many communities do not have back alleys…”

2) I’m not sure if you also wanted to mention in Pitfalls 1 & 2 that the location of the garage takes away access to sunlight for other areas of the home (since you mention this in your introduction)? Also, I’m pretty sure you talk about sun exposure earlier on in the book, right? :-)

3) I really like that there are specific distances listed in Pitfall 3. It gives me something exact to look for if I were using this book to evaluate a home. I realise that not everything can be so clearly defined but I’d like to suggest that wherever you can nail it down to something exact like this, to please do so. :-)

4) Pitfall 5. I think a better floorplan could be used for this one. The extra space looks like it would work for storage (and therefore wouldn’t necessarily be wasted). I seem to remember another similar room that had mechanical stuff in it as well so that you just ended up with a really oddly shaped space that wouldn’t have worked as well for storage? Anyone remember this?

5) Do you present any suggestions on where the garage might be better located? Or options that might eliminate the need for a garage?

6) Along the same lines as Meg’s comment, I was wondering as I read this section if you had any thoughts on where the laundry might be better situated? Perhaps not a specific answer per se (as it might be different for everyone) but suggestions on what to consider (lifestyle? family size?) when you’re trying to figure out where the best place is for your laundry?

Grace, I liked your rewrite of that sentence. I couldn’t quite figure out what the original sentence was trying to say. Sorry, John. ;-)

Meg,
Those are great comments on laundry. The issue of laundry placement – upstairs, main floor, basement – is a good one. We will consider how to place it in the book.

You also ask an interesting question about why people are interested in the site. It is something I would like to know more about.

Your suggestion of finding a plan that combines several good features together is something that we are already looking into.

Li-Na,
As always, your detailed edits are very helpful. I particularly appreciate your commentary on the pitfall examples and how they can be improved.

Hello John,

John, could you clarify what you mean by the term “falsely labelled”? I take it to mean that a real estate agent or a marketing firm is essentially lying about the practical use of a space and only list it for promotional purposes.

I believe at some point during the past week you wrote or said that terms such as “falsely labelled” are explained in an earlier part of your book.

Thanks. I can’t get to this today but will check in tomorrow.

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John,
You have inspired me to keep marking up your copy! :D
I do appreciate your openminded spirit for all of my/our suggestions. It’s been so interesting to see how all these great minds come up with various angles to consider.

Anyway, I took a stab at the Introduction (a rather big one, I’m afraid, with red flowing everywhere!). The other pages looked good, so I spared you. I’ve included the last page, even though I didn’t find much to hack at there. (Okay, I’ll stop with the bloody metaphor…) Those examples of badly placed mechanical equipment are great, if not a little sad to imagine.

Also…I think someone else mentioned this…Pitfall 1 might include a line about how the living space must now rely on side window. It’s a good place to reinforce that message, I think.

I’m looking forward to testing your checklist on the WWWTH exercise tomorrow.

John,

Once again I fail to see the connect between laundry and garage with the predictable confusing result. I thought this chapter was poorly written as is evident from previous comments and was certainly the least enjoyable. You are very negative about garages yet you offer no realistic alternative. Garages are not going anywhere but at least they could be well designed. The real problems are garages the are too small – two car garages which only fit a car and a half, attached garages which do not have a proper direct entry into the house, etc.

I strong suggest separate chapters for living, dining, study, laundry and garage. This keeps things simple and focused. A section like indoor/outdoor living implies the a study of the connection of these two spaces and should be the focus there. At least, that is my vote.

John, while I do not always agree, I certainly applaud and support your message.

Meg, I wanted to answer your question on why I’m hanging out on this website in a separate post. Let me warn you, this will probably turn into a rant.

I noticed that when hubby and I first started looking for a home that many houses just made NO sense. It was like whoever planned the darned things hadn’t considered that people would actually *live* in that house. It seemed to me that if you had the chance to design houses that people would live in, you should at least also have the decency to put some thought into the livability of it. It made me quite furious actually. I would usually leave, ranting about it to my poor hubby.

I like to think that builders or whoever designs the usual cookie-cutter house don’t do stupid things on purpose. But when you see rooms where there is no good place for the bed because Wall 1 has the bedroom door in it, Wall 2 has the bathroom door in it, Wall 3 has a window and Wall 4 (the logical place to stick the bed) is directly facing the bathroom (and bright vanity lights) AND has heating vents on the floor right where the bed would go, you just gotta throw up your hands and I dunno…give the designer an earful.

I admit this example is not a huge deal in the grand scheme of things but it is these little things that really grate on my nerves. The same house had a walk-in closet that had a shelving unit resting right on top of a heating vent (in hindsight, thanks to Slow Home, I now know that it was because the closet had wasted space and they had tried to make the space useful by adding the shelving). Seeing this stuff makes me wonder, if they didn’t bother thinking about things like this beforehand, what *else* have they not bothered to think about that are hidden behind the drywall and ceilings? Hm.

Another wonderful example that sticks in my mind is a 3 story townhouse. Brand new build. It had an elevator so you didn’t have to climb the stairs. Extravagant, but I thought when I saw the ad that it was a great idea for folks who might be in wheelchairs or have mobility issues. I was impressed that the builder had put this thought into the house because someone could conceivably purchase this place and live in it for a very long time. HAH. I was wrong, it was not forethought putting in an elevator, it was a marketing ploy. When I went to check it out (I admit I was simply curious and was not interested in purchasing the place) I quickly discovered that it would have been a tight and very awkward fit maneuvering a wheelchair out of the elevator thanks to the narrow hallway. Since you were going to the trouble of putting in an elevator, why not just go a little bit further and design the place so that *if* someone were in a wheelchair, this place would also work for them?

What is worse is that people are buying these poorly designed houses!!! Agggh. If people didn’t buy them, perhaps builders wouldn’t put them up, right? But people have to live somewhere. And if almost all the houses out there are like this, many folks don’t think about things like this until they’ve moved in…

Anyway, to finally answer your question, before I found the Slow Home site, it felt like I was the only person noticing this sort of stuff. Everyone else just seemed to put up with it. At best, they would admit that yes, things didn’t make sense but that’s what you find in all houses so what can you do? It’s really, really nice to know that I’m not the only one noticing these things and thinking that things *can* be better! :-D

Now that we have a house, hubby and I still do check out the occasional open house when a place catches our interest. But now, we kind of look at it through our Slow Home lenses. :)) I’m slowly picking up the “language” to articulate the problems I see in a particular house and well…it’s empowering being able to do this.

If you made it this far, thanks for asking the question that allowed me to let my rant out. ;-)

Murray,
Sorry for the confusion over the terminology.

False labeling is the term we use to describe the marketing ploy of giving a room name to a deficient space in order to make it seem better and more pretentious than it really is. Its purpose is to mislead a buyer by promising one thing and delivering another. The false labeling of spaces in a fast house can mask significant design deficiencies that might not become evident until after you have moved in.

I hope that helps.

Terri,
Thanks as always for the expert editing suggestions. I am developing some strange affinity to red ink.

In terms of the process so far, like you I am amazed at what has transpired. The range of comments, suggestions, critiques, etc. is truly amazing. Like the design segments, I also continue to be impressed with the thoughtfulness, clarity, and politeness of everyone on the site. Given my experience with other blogs, I think is exceptional.

I like your idea of having some area on the site where individuals can post a short bio if they are so inclined. I happened to notice that this is the 40th week of episodes for the design school. During that time, I feel like I have gotten to know many of the regulars even though I really don’t know much about anyone. So far I have only had the pleasure to meet Louis from Edmonton and Annette from Los Angeles and interview them for the site. Hopefully that will expand in the future.

Li-Na,
I love the rant – I always figured that reno stores and builders were in cahoots with each other. If builders built homes that people could live in, then there would be no reason to renovate.

John–I wonder if you will be addressing “resale” issues in your book. As home buyers get caught up in the fast housing market, one of the hooks is resale value. Even if people don’t need or want or use that extra garage, bathroom, separate dining room, whatever, they are convinced that if they don’t have it, they’ll never be able to sell their house when they need to. It becomes a vicious circle and a self-fulling prophecy.

The educational outreach of the Slow Home movement is an inroad into the group-think of the fast home industry.

Hi John
You’re welcome to use the example.
However there is more to the story. I live in an older neighbourhood close to a main street, so I have the unusual situation of a neigbourhood hardware store. The man who runs it has retired but comes on a regular basis. The stock is amazing and he is the only person who knows where everything is. So I don’t have to go across town to find a screwdriver, although it seems this is a common experience for others.

Jim X

Jim X,
I love those old hardware stores. It is fun to just wander around and see what you might think of doing. I send my students to them as an antidote to, or perhaps inoculation against, all of the the big box stores.

John – since we are slightly off topic with this thread, I would like to add a comment regarding rural living. We live on a ranch near Calgary, try to have a low impact ifestyle by builting a home that fits a slower home design (with a very big barn for the other stuff).
Most of your commnents are geared toward urban lifestyles, but recognize that ALL these ideas work equally well for rural homes and lifestyles (except the need to have vehicles for everything!!)
Please add a comment for us country folk who try to live slow too somewhere in your book.

Li-Na,
I enjoyed your “rant” about fast houses. I haven’t toured many myself, not being “in the market,” but I remember when I first noticed the tendency to oversized homes with attached garages in Edmonton in the late-70s and thinking, Who do these people think they are? I didn’t notice the kind of detail you did. You are more perceptive than I think I would be. Going into a new home, especially one that’s been designer dressed, can be a very seductive experience, as John has so often pointed out. They’re selling a new life, not just a new home. (Of course, the devil is in the details.)

As much as builders make more money due to large floor areas, can they really enjoy building some of those angled walls and other extras? And don’t the plumbers, electricians, drywallers and so on actually curse those nooks and crannies that some of the fixtures or mechanicals are placed in (like today’s chapter)?

There must be some movement towards good design. Perhaps John’s “Pass it On” idea, the next phase of Slow Home, will become part of the solution.

BTW, you don’t need my editing… I’m just one of those editors who thinks writers want to know the rules (like me) and I’m all too happy to spread the gospel, one hyphen at a time! I also spend too much time alone with words for company. :)

Elizabeth,
I was glad to see that you included all your edited pages. I forgot to mention the misspelling of “laundries.” Between the two of us, John will learn to hate red ink, I’m sure. ;)

As for your question about the electrical panel in the closet, I figure that’s a closet that would also be used for storage–possibly a vacuum, broom, or such–and not big enough for a body (I mean a living one of course!). So access is limited whenever someone needs to do anything with the panel.

Elizabeth,
Thanks once more for the in depth comments.

I agree about the tenuous relationship between garages and laundry (other than they could both be classified as service spaces). Given all of the discussion around the combined categories I believe we are going to have to rethink the number of sections in the checklist.

Hi, John and Slow Home community!

Li-Na, I too, enjoyed your rant on poor design. I jump out of my skin every time I come into my house at night and have to turn on the light via the switch behind the open door. When the switch could have been, very easily located on the other wall with the switch for the basement stair. Poor product design of all types drives me nuts.

Oh boy!, I am going to get lynched here!! I am a automotive engineer, previously race cars, own a couple of vintage sports cars, and a motorcycle. But, I only drive one at a time. There is no such thing as a too large garage! The garage is a principle work room for me, I spend hours in there each week, between house reno projects, furniture projects and my auto interest. My lifestyle is, for sure, a little outside of the bell curve of the general population, but among my friends and co workers, this is common place. Too many tools and recreational toys.

I would suggest that the general population uses garages not as a car closet but more for their lifestyle equipment storage. The fleet of bicycles, tricycles, hockey and basket ball nets, lawnmowers, etc. maybe this room is mis-named? Also obsolete furniture that might get used one day. In my neighborhood there is high percentage of garages, where the car does not fit in because this room is filled with other stuff.

I really do hate the way a garage door dominates the look of the front of a house. I like the way this is handled in the design of some Eichler homes where the garage door has the same siding and colour as the house and no trim, so it looks totally blended in, to the wall of the house.

Normally I am involved on the design side of products but I have had some exposure to high volume manufacturing. Where you do, time / motion studies, material flow studies. Most houses I have owned, have had the laundry room located in the basement. from a material flow point of view this just does not make any sense, too much wasted time running up and down the stairs. The laundry equipment should be centrally located next to where the dirty laundry is being generated and where the clean clothes are going to be stored, from a manufacturing process point of view. ( We are victims of our environments)

John, as an engineer, I enjoyed the dimensional data as a guide for the consideration for the proper amount of space for a given function, egress from the car.

I am hanging out at this site because of my side interest in residential architecture and I have bought a raised bungalow, aesthetically and functionally challenged but believe it has good bones, in a good location. 1250 sq ft, built in 1967. It is located within walking distance of a nice street with cafes, restaurants, and a band stand with weekly Thursday night music in the summer, as well a farmers market on Sunday morning. (John, you may know Unionville) I think I was heading in a slow home direction before I knew it existed. My real estate agent suggested your site after I bought this house. I also believe we can learn things from other industries that can be applied to our own industry.

Ok, if I can be saved from the tar and feathering before the lynching, for owning too many vehicles, I am involved on greener vehicle projects at work.

Cheers

Tom, well said.

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On the subject of the garage – from a suburban child of the 60s.

Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky tacky,
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same.

There’s a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they’re all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.
“Little Boxes”, music and lyrics, Malvina Reynolds c. 1962/1990
Image – photo still from “Edward Scissorhands”, Tim Burton, c. 1990.

Ah, the car – a necessary evil for many.

If “a man’s home is his castle” then the car is his war horse complete with protective armour and the garage door is the drawbridge. The garage door, in a suburban setting, presents itself as a defence against the rest of world. Shut the door, go into the house via the garage, and lock yourself away from your neighbours.

On the other hand, do we even need a house in which to live? We seem to want to live in our cars. In the 50s and 60s there was the drive-in restaurant with food trays clipped to our rolled-down windows, then, after dinner, it was off to a drive-in movie theatre. The drive-in has since morphed into the drive-thru; restaurants, banks, liquor stores, dry-cleaners, etc. Our cars are outfitted with cup holders, table trays, refrigerators, bars, beds, fax machines, phones, radios, CD players, DVD players, GPS units.

Our cars are a movable public/private space. Like our knight-errant in metallic shell we think we are immune from the rest of the world. We text while driving, talk on the phone, sing along to the radio, put on our make-up, pick our noses, park and have sex, and then our car is about the last place we can legally smoke our post-coital cigarette.

Our car is an extension of who we are. Our psychological make-up plays out at 120 kms/hr; road rage, drive-by shootings, suicide, accidents and death. Our ego presents itself in the car we choose to buy and/or can afford. At the same time we negate our individuality because everyone like us has the same car and we become simply another demographic.

I drive therefore I am.

Ergo – the garage is the most important room in the house.

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Before there was “the Professor and Mary Ann”, the lyrics to the theme song from Gilligan’s Island were “… with Gilligan, the Skipper, too. The millionaire, and his wife. The movie star, and the rest, here on Gilligan’s Isle.”

This last segment seems to be a bit like “the rest” – and as equally awkward in trying to fill in the missing pieces and connect them.

You may wish to consider breaking your own rule, add pages, and combine the garage with the front/back entry section. The garage and many of the issues in the entry section focus on a particular suburban demographic so here might be the place to deal with it.

The laundry could then be combined with the bathroom or kitchen sections.

The mechanical equipment focus is very good, I think – a valuable concept that many may not consider. Too valuable to leave out, but I am not sure to which section is could be assigned.

The examples you chose are very clear in illustrating the pitfalls.

John,
With the short work week and cooking, I am just getting to posting our comments.I apologize for being so late. In a way it works out well because our comments relate to several of the recent sections( kitchens, bath/powder rooms, laundries, and mechanicals.)
As you may know, California is facing one of the most severe water shortages in the state’s history. It has forced a reassessment of water usage across the state and has lead to many restrictions. On the other hand, it has created what Jules likes to refer to as a ‘lemonade situation’ and increased the use of sustainable strategies to reduce domestic water usage. Low-flow toilets are standard, code in some areas. We are currently recommending dual-flush. The side benefit of this is that it saves money.
HE(high efficiency) appliances and mechanicals used through out a home really minimizes the environmental footprint, saves money over the long run, and increases the resale value.

A note to Murray
Surprisingly in Los Angeles, the car/driving capitol of the world( a dubious title at best) people tend to use their garages as super sized storage lockers leaving little if any room for their beloved cars.

Michael,
Thanks for the warning.I started this open source review process because we have been working on this so closely for so long, it has become difficult to see things clearly.

Further to the reasons we come to Slow Home…I am a curious design layman who has been following Slow Home for quite some time. As I live in Calgary I have had the good fortune of attending a few of John’s weekend sessions. One in particular was with regards to analyzing a real estate purchase with the thoughts of re-making it into a slow home. We started to search for homes with our younger son, who I must say, kept many of the tenets of John’s philosophy in the forefront as we looked from home to home. Once he found a home that would work we ran into the real estate value decisions that had to be made of removing one bedroom on the main to make the home work for him. I am happy to say that three years later he has completely renovated and landscaped the home and it is his pride and joy.
For me, I have been following the site for many months and try not to miss a day. Through the site I have discovered that good design gives me real energy and I am convinced to make my world/home a better place to live in. I have come to the conclusion that you must take the economics of a decision into consideration but then you have to do what needs to be done to make your home enjoyable to be in. John, as we have been going through the checklists I see the possibility for a Home Report Card that may be 20, 25 or 100 points that can be used to grade a home out of 100% – not necessarily whether it is fast or slow. If this list was readily available to the public it could start getting the builder/developers attention. Thank you to all for making this such an educational site and especially to Luis who is willing to share his image archives.

Better late than never…
This is sort of a disjointed thought, so I hope it can be made sense of.
I’ve seen very few, if any laundry rooms that I would rate as slow, but never knew why until yesterday. And that is that very few of them have a big laundry tub in them. I am in the process of planning a bathroom/laundry room remodel and one thing I am considering is a big laundry tub instead of a tiny little bathroom sink. As my partner was struggling with scrubbing out the cat’s litter pans, (don’t slam me, I was doing the dishes at the time) I came to the conclusion that doing that in the bathtub, is a good arguement for the laundry sink I am lobbying for.

So, the way I see laundryrooms right now is very similar to the way the kitchen was thought of in the late 50s and 60′s. A room of little importance tucked away in a back corner.

kaigou – I completely agree with everything you said.

There is nothing wrong with the garage as a car park, storage, work or hobby area. The garage unfortunately represents a design problem which is difficult to solve cost-effectively. So architecturally it is better to not have them. And from a green perspective, anything related to the car is bad. So on this site you will find the majority do not share your fondness for the garage.

As to the comments about ramps – anyone who thinks accessibility is not important is simply wrong. Every architect and engineer working in the building industry should be very well aware of accessibility requirements and codes.

Brad, Doug: I think what makes a garage most difficult is that there just isn’t always enough land to be able to tilt the garage so its short face is towards the street, and that’s about the limit of possible design solutions I can come up with. Even tilted, you end up with just as much impermeable surface by dint of having to pour a much longer driveway to make that curve (unless you’re lucky enough to be on a corner). My property is triangular, thanks to being in a cul-de-sac, so the only reasonable placement for the builder’s mandatory two-car garage is facing the street head-on; if the garage were set perpendicular to the street, my entire front yard would be pavement. From a builder’s perspective, head-on is a decent design: less engineering/street with the driveway design, simple, straightforward. From a design perspective, it’s “big honking garage doors and, uhm, there’s a house somewhere back there”.

“The garage unfortunately represents a design problem which is difficult to solve cost-effectively. So architecturally it is better to not have them.”

That’s not how I see architecture, though: when you have a design problem that’s difficult to solve cost-effectively, that’s *exactly* when you *do* need architecture. A builder/contractor will go for the most cost-effective, which would be no garage except for the greater cost-return of buyers demanding two-car garages, which makes the less-than-aesthetic design worth it, in a builder’s mind. An architect has all that training and experience specifically to solve the difficult problems like this, in ways a builder (or renovator) might never even consider. So when I hit a dead-end in potential solutions, I say: this is where I need an architect, not: well, gee, this is where an architect’s answer would be: “just don’t do it.”

I mean, hell, I can’t even figure out how (or if it’d be possible) to reduce our impermeable footprint by reducing the driveway — because the motorcycle needs a fair bit of room to back up and turn around when leaving the garage, and it’s got to get around the car to do that. (I justify the bike with the fact that it gets 50+ mpg, but sheesh, my little Veedub has a smaller turning radius than that big fat Hog! XD)

I have! But our city has some really peculiar rules about what’s legit for driveways and what’s not. I think some of the city’s positions against non-fully-concrete driveways is because most of the city is former county land, where it was okay to have gravel driveways (which present their own problems in terms of runoff). The city just doesn’t seem to have fully incorporated new technologies into the code, and for all that it’s a strongly green city, the limits of alternate driveway tech seem stop at fake/real cobblestones or bricks… which are great, but can present their own problems for motorcycles.

My favorite driveway solution is actually in my neighborhood, and involves a gorgeous old tree that the builder, uncharacteristically, decided to save — so the driveway literally splits about halfway up, and goes around the tree. Driving past, you see the house, and there’s the implication of a two-car garage, but the old oak tree is big enough that it takes your attention instead. It does mean the driveway takes up more area side-to-side, so cars can get around, but even then, the tree shades the driveway so it doesn’t become a big honking heat sink (like my southwest facing driveway does, ugh). I’d have to get an exception to do that myself, though, because like most jurisdictions you can’t build within X feet of the property line, and I’m at the limit on one side. Bummer, or I’d be out there with the sledgehammer instead of writing this post!

Regardless, that particular solution is one I keep in mind for next-house-time, because I think it’s a great way to reduce the visual impact when angling the garage isn’t possible.